"Good cake shop round the corner from here." Willy chipped in as he waited, trying to make conversation, scuffing his feet as they paused beneath a street lamp to consult their location.
"No there's not." Lawrence replied quietly, consulting the map from Edwin which Willy holds out between his hands in the light. With only one hand and the risks of using trivial magic in a Muggle area, his old school friend is coming in handy. Literally. "You don't even know where you are."
"Yeh I do." Willy protests quickly, looking down at the map. "South - war." It's like lying is part of his reason to live, the ex-auror ponders as he commits the structure of the streets to memory.
"We're not in Southwark Willy," Lawrence corrects, pronouncing it Sutherk or near enough with the slightly nasal tone and south-east English accent. It is on the map, he'll give Shufflebottom that. "This way."

It took a little wandering through Tuesday evening streets but with Lawrence's honed sense of direction they were soon in the right area, without needing to reconsult the map. Together they searched out a good place out of easy sight of muggles to get to work.

"But how we gonna get it out?" Willy asked as they found a suitable alley which led to the back of the shops. It was perfect for evening aparating, but for them it would serve well as a location to summon a dementor.
"We're just going to move it on. It's making the kids miserable." Lawrence explained, busy examining the overlooking buildings. He was pretty sure he'd said much the same an hour or so earlier before they had left Godric's Hollow. Edwin was keen for them to do him a service and move on a dementor that was hanging about persistently. Mortimer was a little too delighted to discover it might be feeding off the happiness of small children. All the more reason to move it on in Lawrence's opinion.
 
"Now, shut up for ten minutes will you."
"Oh-"
"Not a peep, Willy." Lawrence snaps, shooting the shorter wizard a dark glance, "We muck this up the Ministry are within spitting distance."

Silence fell between them, save for the rumble of traffic at one end of the alley and the occasional passer by who didn't give much of a glance up past the commercial bins and goods trolleys in the shadows which obscured the pair of wizards to Muggle eyes. Behind them, Lawrence worked quickly, focused. Once done, they resigned themselves to wait. Shufflebottom's mind drifting to his happy children, while Lawrence contemplated how best to drive it off long term.

Waited.

And waited.

And-

The wailing and howling in their heads began in earnest, whirling both wizards around in the dingy alley. The dementor descended into the yard behind the shops, alone as Edwin has suggested. At the sight of it, Willy's patronus began to slither like liquid silver from the tip of his wand, and at the same moment there was a crack of someone apparating very close by.

In amongst it all, Lawrence and Willy gaped in disbelief at the figure who had appeared out of midair. The dragon patronus still just a wisp, not yet strong enough to defend any of them.

Timing.

Elliot was met with an usually cold air when she landed from her apparation, making her scrunch her shoulders up towards her ears and shiver. The reaction snapped her out of the reverie she had been in--thinking of the simple pleasures she'd have once home: a simple but well cooked dinner, a warm cup of tea after that, her book to read...

"Wow, it's cold," she mumbled under her breath.

She shivered more intensely, a chilled puff of air escaping her trembling breath. Elliot looked curiously at the gray-white mist. She knew it was supposed to be a chilly evening, but right now it felt well below freezing. The witch rubbed her arms and took her first steps forward, thinking even more clearly on the idea of a hot meal and a hot cup of tea to warm her back up from this cold.

She'd barely taken even five steps forward when she heard a quiet but hair raising sound of someone...something?...breathing not too far behind her. Was it breathing? It sounded more like a long inhale, a slow gasp, that made her wary and even a little paranoid. Another mist of chilled breath seeped from her mouth and the simple thoughts she had in her head were beginning to go fuzzy. The images all blurred together then fizzled out, dying like the cooling embers of an old fire.

Then those thoughts felt like they got drawn out of her, causing her to stumble and wince, leaving her with a distinctly empty feeling. The lack of those thoughts left a perfect amount of room for older, less pleasant memories to seep into their place. Elliot shook her head in an attempt to find something else to think of, but that slow intake of breath was there again, leaving her chilled nearly to the bone. Elliot stumbled again when she dared to whirl herself around and face whatever it was.

An instant later she wished she had simply fled instead.

There were few things in Elliot's life that would cause her to swear, and seeing a dementor made her swear out loud. The moment after her surprise came the overwhelming fear of what could happen to her right then. She couldn't bring herself to stand her ground, so she kept backing away from it and pulled out her wand from its place hidden in the sleeve of her sweater.

"Stay away from me. Stay away from me. Stay away from me," she whispered, repeating the words over and over as if just saying them could ward the horrible thing off. But her voice was trembling, along with the rest of her, really.

Willy was brightly visualising holding his little daughter Susie for the first time to conjure his patronus that night. As usual it began as a silver curl from the tip of his wand that began to grow. The crack of another person's appearance between them he lost his concentration and the wisp faded into the night.

There might only be one dementor, but it was still enough to feel the cold and hear his children crying and wife begging for mercy.

The witch who appeared before them shivered and rubbed her arms before she turned. Willy held his breath, unsure if she had seen them both in the shadows. Either way she was suddenly aware of the dementor hanging over the three of them and swore loudly. As her feet travelled backwards, Wlly and Lawrence hurriedly shifted position to keep their distance.

As he glanced to his friend he saw a familiar expression when thinking on his feet, it suggested Mr Musgrave had a plan. Thank Merlin for that.

"Patronus." Musgrave mouthed with a gesture to the scene before them. Shufflebottom was about to reply 'right-o' when the dementor drifted their way and he firmly shut his eyes thinking hard. Beside him, Lawrence threw up his wand, ready to defend in a different manner if it came to it.

But then came the bright thoughts over and above the dark ones. From the tip of his wand grew a silver bubble, bigger and bigger, forming from smoke into form. The dementor shrank away a moment and headed for the witch again as the dragon's snout began to form to the far right of their unwitting accomplice.

Nearly tripping over herself multiple times Elliot continued in her backwards pace to keep her distance from the dementor. She struggled with finding happy thoughts, groping in her mind for something to stick which made her wand sputter with flecks of silver-white, but always failing to actually produce anything substantial.

"No, no, no, no. Please, no," Elliot muttered helplessly, her eyes shifting quickly back and forth between the dementor and the tip of her wand.

It was feeling like a hopeless battle that she simply couldn't win. With every good thought Elliot tried to conjure up in her mind, the horrifying creature only sucked it away from her, leaving her wincing and whimpering. Each time it felt like it was physically scratching at her from the inside to pry the memories away and leave her with the bleeding effect of bad ones to stain her mind and heart. Worse still, it was causing bad memories she had tried to bury and leave behind come back up.

The guilt; Elliot's letters from her mother and father, both divided in how they felt about her disappearing for England.
The anger; the heated argument she had with her proud father and his claims that her behavior was putting a smear on the Blair family line.
The shame; that deep, sunken feeling Elliot had felt after Tom had left her and her realizing that her better judgment, and her parents, had been right.
The heartbreak; that painful instant when she realized that Tom had left her. It was made worse when came the remembrance of the thought that, perhaps, she never meant much to him after all...
The loneliness; the daily silence within her flat disturbed only by her own movements, the only warmth and voices within being her own.

With each rattling inhale of the dementor these feelings grew ever stronger, thus leaving her ever weaker. The dementor fed more greedily from Elliot and she cried out in pain. The pain was more emotional than physical, but it still hurt as if she were being physically attacked. Her knees buckled under her and the witch fell backwards, first landing on her backside and, with the still continuing momentum, fell to her back.

The instincts of Fight or Flight still pulsed within her, but the effects of the dementor were leaving her feeling far too weak and heavy. She felt like she wanted to lie where she was and simply cry until she had no tears left within. Part of her still wished she had simply run away...

Andromeda was tired of dementors. They were everywhere. She had fought more dementors some weeks than dark wizards. It was tiring. Some nights it made her miserable. There was such a thing as too much chocolate. Tonight it was time for another dementor. You would say she was getting good at it? She hoped there was only 1 like they had told her. She hoped the others would come quick.

Crack!! Andromeda appeared by the road. She hoped the Muggles would not see. If they did then the obliviators would fix that. It was very cold and a bit windy. It was also raining again. Now she would get wet and fight dementors. What a good shift. Must not grumble. She walked into the alley beside the shops with her wand. Someone was already there. They had a big dragon patronus. Andromeda was impressed. She did not recognise it. Then she saw someone was hurt and rushed towards them.

The dementor made her hear things that were not there. It made her sad. Andromeda stopped and thought of happy things quickly to make a patronus. Perhaps it was the rain but it was hard to do it tonight. She did not get a good look at where the dragon patronus was coming from. But her panther patronus sprang towards it.

Merlin damn it! This witch who had popped up before them was giving the dementor dinner. Much as that was going to keep it happy for a day at most and away from the primary school children, it wasn't part of the plan.

They had a few options: let it do what it wanted to the witch and leave it to it and return the following day, hoping she would not be in a state to notice or remember them, or intervene and perhaps use her as bait, only she probably wouldn't be the most co-operative. Or a third option - intervene, obliviate… let her forget anything happened. Lawrence was rapidly weighing them up, but none of them were going work unless Willy pulled his wand out.

To his relief, about to consider casting heat or light charms to try and fend off the dementor a while longer, the familiar dragon patronus began to form from the mist and the dementor twisted away from their side of the yard. Rain was starting to fall, and Lawrence was glad of his hood.

The witch wasn't holding up very well at all, Lawrence realised as he shifted behind William to try and let his head clear enough to make a better decision. The dementor was pulling at all the happy thoughts in them all and there weren't too many to pick at in Lawrence before he just felt drained. He hadn't even had time to address it yet and bargain with it.

Lawrence was frustrated to say the least and when the witch finally collapsed into a heap he took his chance, drawing back towards it boldly, arms outstretched in declaration:

"Are you still hungry? We can take you to many more."
Hungry, so hungry…
"Follow me!"


Behind them someone had apparated in at the mouth of the alleyway. Lawrence spun halfway round to make out the figure, shorter than him, in a cloak. Shit.

Plan A then. The trouble being that the dementor looming closer to him from behind was muddying his thought sufficiently to make disapparating near impossible. There was another patronus rushing up towards them and Lawrence dashed out of the way, readying an attack for the approaching figure.

Willy was concentrating very clearly on his children, but it was harder than ever tonight to think. He tried to produce a patronus before the dementor arrived. It was just the one but in the enclosed space it felt worse. The dragon took shape and the appearance helped to instil faith in Shufflebottom, so it grew and grew.

He barely noticed Lawrence dart back and forth until the witch who had been whimpering collapsed to the ground and Willy's heart leapt a beat. Lawrence rushed out and William believed his friend was going to help her but he was addressing the dementor instead!

Confused, forgetting that was the whole plan and that the witch was just an unfortunate interruption, Willy sent his patronus towards the figure on the floor, stumbling forward towards her, keeping low, calling to her.
"Miss… miss? We can't leave her like this Mr Musgrave!"

The arrival of someone else was a bit of a surprise and there was another patronus racing towards his - some sort of big cat. A tiger NO! A panther would you look at that! Shufflebottom paused to admire it and the dragon patronus did too. Musgrave had abandoned his attempt with the dementor it seemed, and was not helping the poor witch on the floor at all.

He was about to when he saw it was an auror coming towards them in crimson robes, the source of the panther patronus. The two were driving the dementor back, but they couldn't stay there. The auror would want to ask them questions and the aurors didn't much like Mr Musgrave from what Willy knew.

And by the way Mr Musgrave had just thrown a stunner at the auror from his hiding place, he didn't much like them either.


Crack!

A flash of red light was followed by a heavy hand on Willy's shoulder. The alley popped out of view with the familiar nausea and squshing sensation of apparating. With the presence of two patroni, Lawrence managed to sidealong apparated them both with an efficient but loud crack, leaving the two witches alone. The dragon patronus puffed into smoke.

Exit Lawrence & William

In the dark the patronuses shone very brightly. It lit the alley up. Andromeda was sure she saw more people. Someone owned that dragon. It was not the person on the floor.

"Who is there?" Andromeda shouted. She hoped they would help. Sometimes local people helped them with the dementors. Andromeda was glad sometimes when they did. It was hard work. She approached as quickly as she could. She needed to help the person on the floor. The dragon patronus was looking at her patronus. The dementor was moving away. Then she saw a wizard. He had his wand out.

As soon as she saw him a stunning spell hit her in the side. She could not breathe a second. Her patronus ran at the shadows. Someone was hiding. The man she could see had not cursed her. Then he vanished before Andromeda could do anything. The dragon vanished too. It was very hard to keep her patronus going. Her side hurt a lot. But someone was hurt.

"No! Elliot!" Andromeda recognised the person lying on the ground. They had gone dancing together in Calaveras. Elliot was nice. Andromeda's panther patronus pounced at the dementor and fought it back. Andromeda rushed to Elliot. "Elliot can you hear me?"

There was so much going on around her, but the dementor had done enough of a number on her to leave everything hazy and unfocused. Not just her vision, but her hearing, and her thoughts and emotions. It was all so muddled together she wasn't entirely aware of everything. She did remember seeing the illuminated form of something. Silver-white like her attempted Patronus charm had been. Was it a Patronus? Could they be that big?  It fended off the dementor effectively. Through her cloudy vision she could make out its movements. Fluid, serpentine. And wings. A dragon?

She heard voices, but she couldn't bring herself to focus fully. It hurt to try, but not as badly as what the dementor had been doing to her. Most of her still felt like lying there on the ground and being lost to the heavy pressure of sadness both over and within her.

So much noise, so much going on. Flashes of light, a snap, a crack. Elliot whimpered and she slowly rolled herself to her side, feeling tears slide along her face as they fell from her eyes.

"...liot! Ell...t...yo...m..."

Another voice. It sounded closer, though it echoed oddly in her ears. She had lost her grip on her wand when she fell, and so it lay just out of reach, though Elliot didn't realize. What still dominated her mind were the unpleasant, unwanted, unhappy memories and they all swirled together in her chest, constricting it, making her wince and whimper again. Whatever thoughts she could string together all lead downwards into despair and doubt. Did she have anything good in her life? It didn't feel like it...

With the familiar crack! of Apparation, the world quickly spun, twirled, and unraveled itself again anew.  Since joining I.D.R.E.A.D., quick response was fast becoming a routine.  But unlike usual, Amaryllis was finding she could not easily catch her breath, could not breathe easily on this other end of Apparating.

Dementors.

They were horrible things, truly terrible creatures. Loathsome, vile... there were not enough words in the witch's vocabulary to really encapsulate it.

Horrible. Awful awful awful...

Her wand was already out, at the ready.  Glass had been pushing for quicker and quicker response times, which meant that the Obliviators--not explicitly trained in medicine or dueling--would just as likely be caught in the midst of a catastrophic event as the trained professionals. "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" she announced with gusto, foregoing any stealth.  A large swan burst from her wand; she had been thinking of her happiest of memories even before she Apparated--Christmas morning when she was 12, and the 15 minutes when not a single person said anything unkind to each other--never to be fully replicated again. 

She hoped the danger was, indeed, dementors and not a Dark Wizard who she might have just betrayed her location to.   Cautiously, albeit a little frantically, her eyes scoured the area.  She gave a sigh of relief as her eyes landed on a set of red robes.  "Auror Gamp," she called, quickly closing in on the two--some sort of victim.  Gamp had been at many of these dementor events as well.  "It must have fled recently..." she observed, looking up at the skies for any trace of it.

Nothing in sight just now... Amaryllis attempted to shake the cold from her very Muggle clothing.  Muggle attire did not seem nearly so warm as wizarding robes and cloaks, but it would not do for an Obliviator to wear any such clothing; she was often the first thing Muggles saw, after being Obliviated.  If she was any bit unusual, she would need to Obliviate that from their memory, too, and it would be a vicious cycle of--

Her eyes next landed on the woman Gamp was with.  She looked... vaguely... witch-like.  And familiar. Amaryllis' stomach turned; she was not a medical professional.  Her job was to Obliviate Muggles.  Where were the others? "We should get her to Mungo's," she stated, somewhat distracted as she scoured the streets for any Muggles within sight.  If she were to send the telltale red sparks high into the air, her work would be next to impossible.    Anyone who might have seen the sky from the window of her flat, people on the London Eye.  People on their aeroplanes and hang-gliders or parachutes and helicopters--though there probably weren't any of those--not that she could see, at any rate. 

"Here," she said, pulling a large bar of chocolate from her pocket.  She stooped to hand it to the woman.  "It's Icelandic--" she said, though that detail sounded silly now that she'd said it.  "It's very pure, and very good." Encouragingly, she broke off a smaller piece for the woman to start.  She'd force-feed her if it came to that, but she hoped it didn't.

"Were there any Muggles when you arrived?" she asked Auror Gamp.

With each second that passed the heavy weight of sadness and doubt began to lift. Had the dementor left? The very air around her seemed to feel less dense, less suffocating. Even so, the memories it had dug up remained a mess within her head. Having been forced to relive those moments left an ache in her heart leaving her chest still feeling heavy, even after the dementor had fled.

There was another voice now. Another woman by the sound of it, though she didn't recognize who it was. A small square was offered to her by a figure who had squat down beside her. She could smell the sweetness of it. Candy? Chocolate? Elliot reached out for it, gingerly took hold of it, then slowly made herself sit up before taking a bite. It was chocolate. The smooth, creamy texture was a welcome feeling in comparison to what she had been put through. The sweet flavor slipped through her mouth and steadily throughout the rest of her, bringing strength back to her. 

As she took another bite things were getting more focused and feeling less horrible. She glanced back and forth between these figures beside her. "Andromeda?" she asked quietly, recognizing one of the figures, though she looked very different than she remembered. It had to have been the robes. She was more used to seeing her more casually dressed when they had met up at Calvernas once or twice before.

"I...How did..." She wasn't quite sure what to ask, or how. So much was still happening in her head and it was hard to think straight.

Andromeda heard someone else arrive. She turned to check who it was. It was help. A huge swan patronus flew up to her panther. It was obliviator Woolfolk. She recognised the patronus.
"Over here Woolfolk!" Andromeda called. She crouched beside Elliot. She squeezed Elliot's shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. She hoped she might come round. "Yes, we should. She has been exposed to a dementor. Her name is Elliot."

Woolfolk had chocolate and gave some to Elliot.
"I do not think so." Andromeda answered. "There was someone else here with a wand. They tried to stun me. They disapparated. There was another patronus. Big one." She was unhappy. Elliot was more important now.

"Elliot!" Andromeda greeted. She was happy to hear the other witch speak. "Elliot are you ok? Eat Woofolk's chocolate. It will make you feel better." She forced herself to smile. It would reassure Elliot. Then she looked up and around. "There was a dementor. It has gone now. What are you doing here? Do you know where you are?"

"There was a Dementor."  Very bad.  Amaryllis nodded, though, so the Auror could tell she was following.  Dementor, yes.  Elliot exposed to a Dementor, check.

"There was someone here with a wand.  They tried to stun me." Amaryllis' eyebrows raised at this.  Even worse.

"They disapparated."

"Good!" Amaryllis said quite emphatically, instinctively.  Quickly, she righted herself. "Not, of course, that they got away."  That was an Auror problem if she ever heard one.  But at least was not an Auror problem likely to launch them all into mortal peril.  She liked that Glass was proactive. Really, she did.  It's just that his push for timely response, well, terrified the hell out of her to some degree.  Last week, she'd had to dodge a hex that was hurled her way when she Apparated onto the spot of a still-current scene.  It didn't matter, really, that it was a drunken wizard hexing pots and pans--it was the principle of the matter.  It could have been worse.

Like Dementors.  Or dark wizards controlling Dementors.  Dark wizards with huge patronuses. 

Now the shaken-up Elliot, well, that she could handle.  Still kneeling at eye-level to the disoriented witch, she smiled encouragingly, still holding the square of chocolate for her.  "One thing at a time," she said sweetly.  "Elliot, do you know where you are?"

Little by little things were clearing up in her head. At least, her senses and some of her basic thought processes. The rest of it wasn't getting cleared up any time soon, sadly; the dementor had forced Elliot to remember so much she didn't want to think about anymore and it all scuttled about in her brain like bugs that ran towards shadows when a light was turned on.

This new witch that Elliot didn't know squat down next to her. "Elliot, do you know where you are?" Had they asked even a minute before she wouldn't have been able to answer coherently. Both she and Andromeda were smiling at her, which felt a little odd, though it kept her from freaking out even more than she probably would have if no one had come to her aid.

She swallowed her current bite of chocolate, feeling a little better with every piece she ate. "I was...returning home from work. I apparated there," she said, pointing not too far in front of her. "It..." Elliot clenched her jaw, feeling herself tremble as she had to make herself remember what had happened just moments ago. She swore she could feel the unnatural chill again. "It was right behind me."

The witch shoved what was left of the little chocolate square into her mouth and chewed, closing her eyes. She didn't want to remember what just happened. She wanted to forget she had seen it, forget what it did to her; but as much as she wished it could be one way, it had to be the other. Even though the chocolate was helping Elliot still gripped at her robe. "It was so cold..." she started, forcing herself to speak. "I didn't...I couldn't fight back. It all felt so..."

No, she didn't have to force herself to speak of those thoughts, no matter how vague she wanted to be. Instead she wound up just chewing on her lower lip as she tried to keep herself from losing it again.

Andromeda nodded. Poor Elliot had apparated right in front of a dementor! She was lucky it had not been worse. Perhaps she had taken the dementor by surprise too.

"It will pass." Andromeda said. She waved her wand and cast warming charms. "Do you apparate here often?" She asked. It sounded like an awful pick-up line. "Were you alone?"